I walked over to them and motioned for the others to stay back as the centipede’s body flailed around.

“You must be an Adventurer from Urd, right? We sure are lucky that you came along when you did. I thought we were all going to be goners for sure!” the man said. He appeared to be a slightly heavy-set human with sun-darkened skin. The woman was a Catkin with patchy white and gray fur, and the children matched her.

“I’m Carnivac. I have a quest to deal with this thing,” I said, thumbing over my shoulder. “There might be a nest nearby.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. My name’s George, I was giving this family a ride to Trone when that thing jumped out at us.”

“Thank you, Mister Carnivac, my name is Lily and this is Joshua and Jacob. I heard that there are employment opportunities at the Automata factories in Trone, so my kittens and I are moving there to find new work.”

I looked at her and the kittens for a bit; I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I took the coward’s way out and changed the subject.

“I need to look around and see if I can find that nest.”

“Yes! Of course! Would you like any help?” George asked.

“No,” I said, as I walked back to the centipede body and pulled free my other sword.

“Right... Maybe I can salvage something from the carriage before we figure out what the next step is.”

The fires had already gone out for the most part and the horses had calmed down. Hopefully they would be able to get by. I followed the direction that the centipede had been heading and looked around. I really wasn’t finding anything useful and didn’t know much of anything about tracking. Once I was out of view of the family and George, I brought up my [Console] and switched to the [Area Network] tab. With this, I was able to see signatures of anything that was running any magic in the area. Thankfully magic beasts were running magic all the time, and I got a hit for a cluster of somethings that were using a fire-based signature. Chances were good that this was a bunch of eggs or babies, but trying to determine where they were was pretty difficult, so I would need to keep checking the signal strength as I walked around. Sort of like playing hotter-or-colder.

Eventually I found a hole at the base of a large tree. This would be the entrance to the nest, but it was too small for Carnivac to fit so I’d have to go without him. I opened up the hatch and hopped out but stayed connected via proxy. I shifted my arm into cannon mode and double-checked my ammo; 5 explosive magma rounds, 10 ice shards, and 10 rock bullets. I had upgraded a bit so that I could now swap out my ammo types and reload via my [Inventory]. I looked at Carnivac and readied his swords, then crawled into the mouth of the nest.

The tunnel went downwards for a while before opening into a larger rain trap chamber then back upwards a bit. There was zero light at this point, however Automata eyes were able to see the full spectrum of light frequency and filter it as desired. So I shifted from normal visible light to InfraRed. This allowed me to see in a sort of Predator vision. The heat given off by Flame Centipedes lit up the tunnels pretty well and I was easily able to find my way along. Eventually I came to a larger chamber and found the entire floor covered in softball-sized eggs with another Flame Centipede coiled up on top of them.

The mama, I guessed, saw me and hissed, clacking its jaws. It then reared its head back and spat out a stream of liquid fire at me. I had to switch out to a different light spectrum to keep from being blinded by the heat as I dodged out of the way. I fired a couple of ice shards at it, but they really didn’t do anything. I don’t know what I had expected, in video games that usually seemed to be the counter, but they were mostly water by the time they got to their target. I switched to the rock bullets and hit her a couple times in the side of the head. I could see a small crack in her shell where I’d hit and tried to keep hitting the same spot, but she decided to come after me instead.

I scrambled as quickly as I could back out the way I’d come with her close on my heels. As soon as I saw the fading daylight, I dove out of the tunnel and rolled out of the way. Carnivac was ready and waiting, just above the opening. As soon as the centipede’s head popped out of the tunnel, the swords scissored neatly, slicing it right off of the body. The momentum of the body carried half of it out of the tunnel anyway, and it writhed around a bit before admitting defeat. Via Carnivac, I gave myself a high five and put the big bug carcass into [Inventory]; I’d get the mana crystal from it later or ask Najii to do it. With the body out of the way, I went back into the tunnels and found another chamber that seemed to be a food store that was full of previous travelers as well as local animals. I put everything I found into my [Inventory] and would let the Guild determine who these people were so that their families could be contacted. I then went into the egg chamber and carefully looked around. It was really hot in that room, so I guessed that the temperature was a requirement to incubate the Flame Centipede eggs. I had no idea if living things could go into my [Inventory] or not but decided these would be perfect test subjects. I put one inside and then took it back out. Via thermal, I could see the baby inside, still radiating heat, but it wasn’t moving around. Maybe I had killed it? Maybe it was asleep, or just not moving? Well, I’d let the Guild worry about that, so I put the entire clutch into [Inventory]. According to my status screen, I now had three hundred and forty two of them in storage.

I had just stepped out of the tunnel when George came walking up and saw me outside of Carnivac.